Category Archives: Customer Service

This is where I collect and share all things related to awesome customer service.

Quote: The best customer service experience is when they never have to contact you.

Posted on by

Awesome Jeff Bezos Quote:

 5. Obsess over Customers. As Bezos said in his Wired interview, the best customer service experience is when they never have to contact you.

Forbes Article: 6 Things Jeff Bezos Knew Back in 1997 That Made Amazon a Gorilla

In my early days of Flying Cart it was my goal to get people to email and call us. We saw that as a sign of engagement.  We were completely wrong. People just want the product to work. Getting your email open and typing out a question is a lot of work and nobody wants to do it.

Remember the last time you contacted customer support? It was probably because the product didn’t work the way you wanted it to. The worst thing of all is only in very few cases does someone actually contact you – most people (like me) will just hit the back button until they find a product that works for them.

When someone contacts support with a question think about how you can solve it before they even ask it.

Sales Copy Hack

Posted on by

Change your sales copy based on what your customers are saying.

Yesterday a customer asked if we had a “Virtual Vault” – a way to protect her digital files that she is selling. Technically we do, but we just didn’t explain it to her in ways she would understand. 6 simple words “Virtual Vault – Secure Digital File Protection” makes way more sense than our paragraph explaining our security features.

Your Customer is Always Right

Posted on by

I’ve heard the phrase “Your Customers is Always Right” over and over again. I thought I understood what that phrase meant. You know… give the customer what they want, but it wasn’t until last week that I actually conceptualized it. This is my short story on my realization.

At Flying Cart we decided to launch features based on repeat customer support questions. If we keep getting the same questions we aren’t doing our job well, we need to make our product work the way our customers think it’s going to work.

Make Your Product Work How Your Customers Think It Should Work {tweet}

Here are two changes we made:

1. If the customer upgrades while on their free trial – they remain on the free trial. Before, customers would get charged the full price when they upgraded.

2. Only authorize the customers credit card for $0. Previously we were authorizing the credit card for the full amount of the package ($9.99/mo) – this led a $9.99 authorize being displayed on the customers credit card and in most cases it looked like a charge (not an authorization). This led to tons of customer phone calls and emails asking why they were charged.

It Is All About What They Want, Not What You Want

The way to make sure that the customer always wins is to find the win-win scenario.  I resisted the change because it seemed like lost revenue, but I needed to test that.  In fact, since launching this feature we have seen an increase in upgrades and a reduction in customer support emails – everyone wins!  If I hadn’t have been willing to test what customers were telling me, I would have be missing out on upgrades, and they wouldn’t be as happy.

Here is why I think we have seen an increase in upgrades. Our sweet sales copy:
“Upgrade Today for Free and enjoy all the features now! – You won’t be charged your new rate for another 3 weeks!”

Do you have a great story about “The Customer is Always Right”. Please, let me know in the comments – I’d love to include it in an updated version of this post (full credit will be given).

Get Forms Signed Quickly

Posted on by

Signing application forms can be a daunting task. Knowing where to sign and what to write always seems confusing to me. That is why the best thing to do for people like me is offer a filled out example of what the legal doc should look like after you sign it.

I can’t take credit for this idea. I saw BrainTree do this and it got me to sign the papers quickly.

Screenshot of how to get people to sign legal docs

Enthusiasm Goes A Long Way Over Email

Posted on by

I work over email, I rely on my words to get things done and make money. I email developers, designers, and most importantly my customers.

25% of my day goes to customer support at Flying Cart and sometimes I find myself going above and beyond for certain customers.

I want to go above and beyond for all my customers

I started to ask myself why I do this for certain customers. At first I thought it was based on when I had my coffee or the type of question they asked. As I started analyzing my emails in our archive I began to notice a pattern. All the people I went above and beyond for started things off with a nice greeting or compliment.

Here are a few things customers said to me:

  • “Hey, Rishi. I’m loving the outcome.”
  • “Hi Rishi! This was so helpful and we appreciate it so much. I have a few more questions and could use your help.”
  • “I’m totally loving Flying Cart. It is so easy to use. I need some help though on setting up…”

– These type of responses totally pump me up. It showed me that I was making progress. They also spelled my name correctly!

When things got frustrating they showed me a little sympathy:

  • “I hope I’m not coming off as a pest with this, Rishi”
  • “I know this is a lot of work but we really want it to be amazing”

– This was after 10+ emails which was frustrating. When the customer shows me that they understand they are being annoying it completely relaxes my frustrations and keeps me plugging along.

I broke it down even further and found 2 major patterns:

  • The use of my name: “Hi Rishi”

– By simply stating my name I felt like I was helping out a friend not some random stranger.

  • Using emoticons: “:)”

– In college I use to cringe when my friends used emoticons, I thought it was something only 13yr old girls use. But when it comes to email interactions with co-workers or customers I actually picture them smiling which does a lot for my mood.

In summary: emoticons, friendly greetings, and a little enthusiasm!

This works well for 2 reasons:

  1. No one else does it. So your email will stand out as polite, mild mannered, educated, and fun to work with!
  2. Your emails are read based on how the recipient reads it. Do whatever it takes to convey a positive mood so they don’t create a mood for you.

Do you have any tips on how to sound better over email? I’d like to know in the comments below.

Increase Survey Response Rate by Embedding it in an Email

Posted on by

I have been noticing a new trend in my inbox lately. Every company wants to know more – how they can improve, what features I like, how I discovered their company, etc. I only give feedback on companies that make it super easy for me.

I never click on survey or feedback links in an email.

However, I always rate and review things when it is embedded in my email and it only takes one click.

Google Checkout does a great job with this. I’ve rated more things via Google Checkout than on Amazon:

Google Checkout Feedback Email

Followupthen does an amazing job with this as well:

Follow Up Then 1 Click

How important is this?

Pretty important. Think about the last time you bought something on Amazon. How many of the reviews did you read? Would you buy a product with 0 reviews? This is a great way for your users to generate content for you and gather feedback about your products.

Quick Survey Tip:

The longer the survey/feedback form is the more likely I’m going to stop reading the questions and start filling bubbles in randomly. Limit yourself to 1 question if possible.

Graph Comic: Number of Questions Vs. Likelyhood of Getting Real Answers

Super easy way to pull this off via Google Forms:

1. Go to Google Docs.
2. Click on “Create New” -> “Forms” (2 minute video of me setting up survey and embedding it in an email.

3 Simple Steps to Increase Customer Retention

Posted on by

Comic that shows keeping old customers is way easier

Comic by Ted Goff

The awesome guys at Blogtrepreneur let me do a guest blog post on their site about simple ways to increase customer retention.

I go into examples of things that have worked for me as well as examples of what other companies are doing really well. Here is a quick summary of what I talk about:

* How Walmart pays someone to say hello to you right when you walk in
* How PhotoJojo sends really great emails on fun things to do with your camera
* An email template you can use to make a customer feel special right when they sign up.
* And many more examples (DailyBooth, AirBnB, Reddit, Meetup.com, Twitter, SaaS Businesses). See the full post here.

Email Template to get Customer Testimonials

Posted on by

I’m a big fan of adding customer testimonials to a website. People love buying things if they have
proof that other people are having success with it.
Recently, my buddy Rich started a company called LucieBot that helps you find customers on forums on QA sites. He has about 70 users and is ready to turn on the promotion engine. He asked me how he should go about asking those users for customer testimonials to increase conversions on his site.
Here is the email template I gave him:

Hi fname,

I’m Rich, the lead developer of LucieBot. I really would like to know how I can help you better.

Have you made any new sales because of LucieBot?

If you haven’t yet, tell me about your business a little more and maybe I can help you come up with some better keywords.

Looking forward to your reply.

Thank you,
Rich
Your Phone Number
Your email

CC nextweek@followupthen.com (this way you can follow up with them every week to get a reply).
This email template will help you get customer testimonials and feedback on your product. For really amazing customer testimonials checkout 37Signal’s Highrise HQ.

PS Customer testimonials work because they don’t look biased. Instead of a sales guy selling you it is your neighbor or friend or someone you trust. In infomercials you will notice 50% of the commercial is customers telling you how much they love the product.

How to Hire an Amazing Customer Support Person off Craigslist

Posted on by

Recently my company needed some extra hands on customer support. I wanted someone that would take customer support to the next level. The best place to hire people is through your inner circle, the second best place is Craigslist’s Job section. It costs $75 in San Francisco and it will be worth it.

The problem with Craigslist is you will be swamped with resumes and intro emails immediately. You need to create a system that filters out the crappy people from the awesome people. Here is how to create that system.

Step 1: Create an informative job ad on Craigslist. Here is what you should include:
– What qualities the applicant should have
– Bonus qualities (but not required)
– Their primary tasks and what they will be doing on a day to day basis
– About your business
– The Pay
– The Location
– An application form (I will talk about the application form in Step #2)

Here is a link to my actual job ad.

Step 2: Create an application form for your job ad.
Create a Form using Google Docs.

Only ask questions that are relevant. I left out a lot of things you will find on resumes like where they went to college and their past employers, simply because I didn’t care. I just really wanted to know if they could do the job they will be hired for (like answer customer support emails) really well.
Here are a few of the questions I asked:
1. We will be working in person together.  Can you come to Ritual Coffee Roasters in the mission 5 days a week?
This was a simple yes/no deal-breaker question that helped filter out all the people that wanted to work remotely. I highly suggest adding another yes/no deal-breaker question like “Do you know HTML/CSS?”. 

2. Do you have a blog/website with content you have written?  If so please list it below:
This let me look at their writing and showed me if they knew how to blog.
3. Pretend we’re your mom.  Tell us step by step how to create a free store on www.FlyingCart.com
This was the most important question. We had over 85 applicants. Over 60% of them got this wrong. It also showed me if they were detailed oriented and understand how to explain our web app in writing.

4. Do you have any references?
I always call references to make sure the person is legit. I wanted this information handy if they passed the 2nd round interview.

Here is my actual job ad application form.
Step 3: Post to Craigslist and watch the applications roll in. Wait 2-5 days to send out your 2nd round interview.
Some Stats:
400 people viewed the application form
85 people applied
10 people were extended 2nd round interviews
1 person was hired and he is awesome.
Step 4: Select the 10 best applicants and send out a 2nd round interview via email.
Make it 2 very detailed questions.
Step 5: Setup In Person Interviews with the 3-4 people that you really like.

Step 6: Enjoy working with your new hire!


Great people are hard to find. I hope this process will help you find someone awesome. Good luck!
Please let me know if you liked this post in the comments below.

Here is a good "No" response

Posted on by

I’m constantly getting bombarded with questions or features that we just don’t have.  I have a really hard time figuring out what to say to these people…. until now! I’m using wufoo for a side project and they just sent me the perfect “No” response back. It is now a canned message of mine.

Hi Rishi, 

Unfortunately, we don’t have a way of doing that. It’s a good idea, though, and we may look at adding something like that when we go over the available field types again.

Sorry for the bad news. If you have any other questions, please let me know.

Andrew